I was initially contacted by an Amazon internal recruiter a few days after applying for an advertised position on Indeed.com. I had a phone interview with the hiring manager a few days later and was invited to fly out to Seattle the next week for a round of face-to-face interviews. Once in Seattle I was put up at a nice hotel for 2 nights and given a fair per diem for incidentals. The interview started around 11 am when the recruiting manager met me in the lobby wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He took me to a small conference room, informed me that he was leaving the company for another job (red flag!) and Amazon would not be able to pay or match my current compensation but would rather offer a sign-on bonus and stocks if an offer was extended (shenanigans!). I had to meet with 8 people from 11:15 am – 5 pm for a series of behavioral-based questions around my background. This was overkill in my opinion. If I were a local candidate then I would have left after my first meeting with the recruiting manager but felt obligated to stay since they had paid for my plane ticket and hotel of 2 days. So, there I was sitting through a bunch of interviews and watching the clock. As mentioned in other posts, the lunch interview was with the hiring manager and you really can’t eat because he was asking me non-stop questions and I thought it to be a bit nerve racking. Most of the people who interviewed me were wearing jeans and baseball caps. They followed up a few days later with a decline email but I knew they were and would not have accepted even if an offer was extended. Basically a bunch of quirky people working at this place and a complete cultural mismatch for me combined with the cheap compensation package or as they spin it “frugality”.